Abstract
The present essay works with three major writers of the Indian diaspora located in different parts of the Western world and the nature of their relation to their homeland. Why are past histories important to them? Where do they interact with secular pasts, rationality and discrimination? The three also belong to different religious communities and these reflect their visibility or invisibility in the nation. Through recollection and debate, they expose the contradictions in national histories. Underlying these memories is a critique of the nation’s mistakes as well as an enduring concern for it. Their narrative strategies vary, the problems they present are marked by difference and while Rushdie uses an ‘unreliable narrator’ and magic realism, Ghosh resorts to contradictory time zones and Mistry moving away from these strategies, narrows down his focus to a specific community which feels isolated within its own country. How does their use of time and space construct home, how does it reflect their memories and where does it locate identity—are some of the issues explored.
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- 1.
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (New York: Avon Books, 1982).
- 2.
Amitav Ghosh, The Circle of Reason (New Delhi: Penguin, 1986, 2008).
- 3.
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey (Calcutta: Rupa & Co., 1991).
- 4.
‘Unreliable Narrator in Midnights Children’, Imaginary Homelands. Essays and Criticism 1981–1991. (London: Granta Books, 1991). 22–24.
- 5.
Myrian Sepúlveda Santos, ‘Memory and Narrative in Social Theory: The Contributions of Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin.’ Time and Society (London: Sage, 2001). Vol. 10 (2/3) 163–189.
- 6.
Rushdie on the ‘Writing of the Novel’ in the Guardian 26 July 2008. Internet ref. accessed 20 October 2014.
- 7.
The Paris Review, the Art of Fiction, 2014. Rushdie interviewed by Jack Livings. Internet reference. The paris review. org/interview/the art of fiction, accessed 20 October 2014.
- 8.
The Shadow Lines (Delhi: Ravi Dayal, 1988).
- 9.
Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome (Delhi: Ravi Dayal, 1996).
- 10.
Refer my essay, ‘Agenda, Activism and Agency: Mapping the Postcolony’ in The Politics of Literary Theory and Representation: Writings on Activism and Aesthetics, Ed. Pankaj K. Singh (New Delhi: Manohar, 2003), 159–175.
- 11.
Ghosh, The Circle of Reason (New Delhi: Penguin, 1986, 2008).
- 12.
The Hungry Tide (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2011).
- 13.
The Glass Palace (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2000).
- 14.
Refer Jain, ‘Agenda, Activism and Agency’ in Ed. Pankaj K. Singh, 159.
- 15.
Mistry, Family Matters (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2002).
- 16.
See Myrian Setulveda Santos. (see footnote 5 above) The Politics of literary They and Representation.
- 17.
See Santos, 164–65.
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Jain, J. (2017). To India with Love. In: The Diaspora Writes Home. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4846-3_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4846-3_17
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